Break All The Rules.

It came up with this surprising finding: If you're losing good people,
look to their immediate supervisor. More than any other single reason,
he is the reason people stay and thrive in an organization.  And he's
the reason why they quit, taking their knowledge, experience and
contacts with them. Often, straight to the competition.

"People leave managers not companies," write the authors Marcus
Buckingham and Curt Coffman. "So much money has been thrown at  the
challenge of keeping good people - in the form of better pay, better
perks and better training - when, in the end, turnover is mostly
manager issue." If you have a turnover problem, look first to your
managers.  Are they driving people away?

Beyond a point, an employee's primary need has lessto do with money,
and more to do with how he's treated and how valued he feels. Much of
this depends directly on the immediate manager. And yet, bad  bosses
seem to happen to good people everywhere.. A Fortune magazine survey
some years ago found that nearly 75 per cent of employees have suffered
at  the hands of difficult superiors. You can leave one job to find -
you  guessed it, another wolf in a pin-stripe suit in the next one.

Of all the workplace stressors, a bad boss is possibly the worst,
directly impacting the emotional health and productivity of employees.
HR experts say  that of all the abuses, employees find public
humiliation the most  intolerable. The first time, an employee may not
leave, but a thought has  been planted..

The second time, that thought gets strengthened.  The third time, he
starts looking for another job.  When people cannot retort openly in
anger, they do so by passive aggression. By digging their heels in and
slowing down. By doing only what they are told  to do and no more. By
omitting to give the boss crucial information.

Dev  says: "If you work for a jerk, you basically want to get him into
trouble.  You don't have your heart and soul in the job."

Different managers can stress out employees in different ways - by
being  too controlling, too suspicious, too pushy, too critical, but
they forget that workers are not fixed assets, they are free agents.
When this goes on too long, an employee will quit - often over seemingly
trivial issue.

It  isn't the 100th blow that knocks a good man down. It's the 99 that
went before. And while it's true that people leave jobs for all kinds of
reasons- for better opportunities or for circumstantial reasons, many
who leave would have stayed - had it not been for one man constantly
telling them: "You are dispensable. I can find dozens like you." While
it seems like there are plenty of other fish especially in today's
waters, consider for a moment the cost of losing a talented
employee.There's the cost of finding a replacement.

The cost of training the replacement. The cost of not having someone to
do the job in the meantime. The loss of clients and contacts the person
had with the industry. The loss of morale in co-workers. The loss of
trade secrets this person may now share with others.  Plus, of course,
the loss  of the company's reputation. Every person who leaves a
corporation then becomes its ambassador, for better or for worse.

We all know of large IT companies that people would love to join and
large television companies few want to go near. In both cases, former
employees have left to tell their tales. "Any company trying to compete
must figure out a way to engage the mind of every employee,"

Jack Welch of GE once said.   Much of a company's value lies "between
the ears of its employees".  If it's bleeding talent, it's bleeding
value.  Unfortunately, many senior executives busy travelling the world,
signing new  deals and developing a vision for the company, have little
idea of what may be going on at home.